“When we found out that we were accepted, we were really excited to premiere our film there,” she says. “Then we found out about opening night and it took it to the next level. The Belize Film Commission has been supporting us, and they invited me to be on part of a panel.”

“Yochi” is a story of a 9-year-old selectively mute Mayan boy who guards a nest of endangered yellow-headed parrots in Belize’s pine savanna.

When his beloved elder brother, Itza, returns from the city, Yochi learns that he’s in debt and has turned to poaching – setting the brothers on a collision course.

“This film is a story about connection and finding your voice,” says Lapid, a professor at the Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University. “And it poses the question, what are you willing to sacrifice to protect that which is most sacred to you?”

Lapid was approached in March to do a documentary about the decline of the yellow-headed parrots.

The global populations have decreased over 90 percent since the 1970s, due to poaching and deforestation.

The Belize Film Commission identified “Yochi” as a film that can have a positive social impact.

Lapid says she is working with the Belize Bird Rescue to plan a screening tour in towns and villages across Belize to educate pine savanna communities about alternatives to poaching.